Chindata Group Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:CD) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

It doesn’t consider the potential explosive growth in this new technology demand essentially driven by this ChatGPT stuff. So there could be some upper side opportunity based on that. We are still watching it closely on this trend and see whether it can drive up our customers’ business and in turn, we can benefit from it. And third point, we want to mention is that if you look at our client base, one of them is Microsoft. They are basically the leading forces in this ChatGPT stuff overseas. Our domestic and our key clients — one of our key client for our domestic business, we believe this should be the leading force as well on this trend. So in any case, once this trend become quantifiable and can be pretty much, would become some certainty.

We’re definitely going to be one of the first ones to benefit a lot from it.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Edison Lee from Jefferies.

Edison Lee: So I have three questions. Number one is that I want to ask about the CapEx guidance in 2023. And number two is I think that the revenue and EBITDA guidance for 2023 is a little bit low. So I would like to know the assumptions behind this guidance. And number three is, I want to get a little bit more details about the asset impairment that they booked in the fourth quarter.

Nick Wang: Thank you, Edison. I think I’m going to refer your first and the third question to our Finance Senior VP, Zoe, to give you an answer. I’m going to address your second question on the guidance.

Zoe Zhuang: So thank you, Edison. On your first question regarding the CapEx vendors next year. We forecast it will be around RMB 5 billion, and this is based on our current business plan and also the project we disclosed. So this is based on our current project delivery schedule and also the historical cost level. So for the third question, you mentioned is or the details of those one-off long-lived asset impairment. This is mainly for Chinidea, which was previously elected business for the manufacturing part of the company. And this is mainly for this plant factory decoration and equipment investments. And so far, we’ve decided for this manufacturing part of the key equipments of this MEP investment, we will more cooperate with our external strategic vendors, so we will not operate these factories anymore.

So there is a onetime long-lived asset impairment. The cost is — the impairment amount is around RMB 84 million and this is a very thorough and onetime clean up. We don’t expect any further impairment or similar cases in the future and hope this helps you. Impairment finished.

Nick Wang: I think one thing I disagree is actually around 30% the revenue — the growth on the revenue side, EBITDA side is not. It’s probably — if you compare our — the previous past several years, growth rate, it’s probably going to be a little bit lower, but still much higher than the industry average. And also, I think I just mentioned that we anticipate that this is our base case forecast essentially. So basically, I don’t even call it the forecast. It’s probably just more like a natural result of all the current contract and the execution under construction. And once they got delivered, they’re going to ramp up in the — pretty much on average 9 months ramping up time. So we put all this very conservative base assumption into the model and what you will get is actually the 30% increase on the top line.